A study on minority media and languages ​​in Europe has been presented in Atlanta

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08/04/2019

A study on minority media and languages in Europe has been presented in Atlanta

Iñaki Zabaleta, Professor of Journalism and director of the HEKA research group "European Less-Favored Media and Journalism" at the University of the Basque Country, said that 4,800 journalists are working on native languages at the Atlántida Congress. All journalists work on 1,070 media, among other data, in a conference given at the annual conference of the "Joint Applied Linguistics Association (AAAL)".

The research team has been working for 18 years, receiving data on journalism and the media that are in a minority language. The languages studied are: Basque, Galician, Catalan, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Breton, Corsican, Frisian, and Sami (Laponian).

In Zabalea's word, these language communities have a total of 37 million people, of which 12 million speak their native language. According to the HEKA group, the annual economic volume of the media (the sum of income) is 1,219 million euros. Most popular media work in Catalan and Catalan. 712 million corresponds to Catalan media and 103 million euros to Basque speakers. Of all the media analyzed, 87% have a website and 75% have opened a profile on social networks.

During the conference, other data on the research were also revealed, a very interesting one: the Media Development Index, carried out by the Zabaleta research team. This index measures the level of media power of minority languages after analyzing various variables.

This year, the first time the AAAL has been invited by a representative of a Spanish university as a speaker. According to HEKA Director, "an invitation from the AAAL to give a lecture to the members of Congress (mostly to the United States and Canada linguists) is the acknowledgment of our team's and university's work". Iñaki Zabaleta was very proud, in his words, that the AAAL associations were in contact with them because "they were doing our research for years." Also, in the opinion of the organizers, the talk of Zabaleta was very welcome in front of 1,500 members of the Congress.

Information source: Press Release ehu.es

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